Tamrat Layne

Tamrat Layne Admassu (Ge'ez: ታምራት ላይኔ አድማሱ; born 1955) is an Ethiopian former politician who served as the Prime Minister of Ethiopia during the Transitional Government of Ethiopia after the end of the Derg regime. Previously during the 1980s, he was a leader of the Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement (the forerunner of the Amhara National Democratic Movement), one of the groups that fought against Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in the Ethiopian Civil War.

== Biography ==

Tamrat Layne was born in 1955 and raised by a single mother in Addis Ababa. He led the Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement during the 1980s, fighting against Mengistu Haile Mariam in the Ethiopian Civil War. In an interview in 1988, he acknowledged that the goals of his movement were similar to that of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, such as its approach to national self-determination and foreign affairs. A self-proclaimed atheist, he believed that "freedom comes out of the barrel of the gun."

When Mengistu was overthrown in 1991, Tamrat Layne became one of the three-man EPRDF-TPLF ruling the country and then in the democratically elected government, the other members being Meles Zenawi (President...